How one hippie town became the anti-vaxxer capital of Australia

In 1995, after the end of what she calls an "unfortunate relationship", Eve Jeffery left her home in Myrtleford, north-east Victoria, with her two young children, hit the road in her yellow Kombi and drove north, to Byron Bay, on the far north coast of NSW. Back then, before the tourist boom that has subsequently swamped it, Byron was a quiet place, a counter-culture refuge with reliably great surf, a strong sense of community, and as much wholefood as you could eat.

Mullumbimby-based reporter Eve Jeffery: locals “go nuts” when vaccination is covered by the weekly paper: “It gets to the stage where we have to stop people threatening to kill one another.”one credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives worldwide.

"I've seen more vaccine-preventable diseases since working in the Northern Rivers than I saw in 10 years of working in remote Aboriginal communities," says Dr Rachel Heap, an intensive care specialist at Lismore Base Hospital, an hour's drive south-west of Byron Bay. In the past few years, the hospital has seen cases of rare and easily preventable diseases such as tetanus, diphtheria, mumps and epiglottitis.

The turning point, however – the region's rebirth, as it were – came in 1973, with the Aquarius Festival. Held over 10 days in May, the event drew some 5000 free-thinking individuals and alternative lifestylers to the fields around Nimbin, west of Mullumbimby, where they camped out, listened to music, got high and took their clothes off. Some liked it so much they stayed, setting up co-ops and communes and sowing the seeds for what would soon become Australia's counterculture capital.

Mullumbimby’s focus on alternative lifestyles and wellness draws tourists as well as tree-changing city-dwellers.In the Northern Rivers, however, even some doctors have become susceptible to anti-vaxxer sentiment. One morning in Mullumbimby I get talking to a cafe owner, a middle-aged woman who moved here from Sydney nine years ago with her parents."My dad had dementia and we wanted to get him out of the city, and my older brother was already living up here," she says.

Mullumbimby is meant to be a lovely, mellow, hippie town where everyone is so accepting. But people can eat you alive. , where I have an appointment in a cafe with a woman who I'll call Helen. Helen is in her mid-50s, with hazel eyes and honey-coloured hair, and an air of tranquillity so profound that she puts me immediately at ease, like a non-pharmaceutical calmative. Helen has brought to the cafe some reading material, books on natural mothering and the like. She says caring for her kids has always been the most important thing in her life. "I just wanted to be the best mum and wife I could be.

Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)

TimElliottSMH As a (former) resident of the northern rivers you soon become aware of the dumb cliches about the place. I stopped reading this casual, lazy rubbish when you said there’s no Woolies in Mullumbimby. Here’s a pic of the Woolies right in Mullumbimby:

TimElliottSMH Mullum. Epicentre of the next zombie apocalypse

TimElliottSMH Put a fence around them

TimElliottSMH Northern NSW, I'm shocked! Nope, not really.

TimElliottSMH There is always a silver lining to any problem. Take Mullum for instance. As anti-vaxxers cluster, so will childhood diseases. One good outbreak & the issue solves itself.

TimElliottSMH Indicative of how susceptible some people are to hair brained ideas!

TimElliottSMH Went to Nimbin once. Locals didn’t look happy.

TimElliottSMH For public health reasons should there be road signs warning visitors and tourists about the risks entering the area ?

TimElliottSMH 'Jeffery is an amply bosomed 55-year-old woman with greying hair and a silver nose ring' Wtf, wrote this article,

TimElliottSMH One place I'll never live again

TimElliottSMH As someone who went to school in Mullum and Ballina, with family who live between Lismore and Billinudgel, it’s a little galling to hear only the voices of those who moved there in the last 15 years. They’ve changed the area and brought their entitled wrong headedness with them.

TimElliottSMH Northern NSW, lived up that way once, these people move there to change the World, the only thing they change is their bong water.

TimElliottSMH The article states that Mullim doesn't have a Woolworths, but as of recently it does

TimElliottSMH But you told us it was only Trump supporting rednecks and conservatives that were anti-vaxers...

TimElliottSMH . They’re hippies. Not scientists. They “feel” stuff.

TimElliottSMH cut the immigration or cut the population to make more room? anti vax a good effective population control tool?

TimElliottSMH Terrible.

TimElliottSMH Is it the foreign white European-Anglo-Christian community of Australians again as shown? Will the Australian government do a favour for their children by taking them away as they did with the Stolen Generations?

TimElliottSMH One hippie over rated area they can have 😄 Soak it up hippies and all your queer ideas😂

TimElliottSMH Vax-awareness. :) how much $$ do you get from big pharma advertising budgets?

TimElliottSMH this could end the world

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